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On February 23, 2026, Edwin Lutyens’s bust was removed arsenic portion of the government’s ongoing decolonisation drive. In its spot present stands the bust of C. Rajagopalachari, the archetypal Indian Governor-General of autarkic India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi framed the determination arsenic an enactment of “leaving down symbols of slavery,” portion the Opposition, predictably, criticised it successful acquainted and unimaginative terms. This is not the archetypal clip a statue — oregon successful this case, a bust— has been taken down. Such acts are attempts to wreak vengeance connected the past and rewrite the future.
There is nary request to shed tears for Lutyens or what helium represented. He is possibly the lone designer successful modern past whose sanction has, for astir a century, been synonymous with an full city. Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who designed Washington D.C., has a fistful of metropolis landmarks named aft him, specified arsenic a plaza, a metro presumption and promenades, successful the metropolis helium shaped. His sanction arsenic the city’s designer was erased and resurrected lone a period later. Today helium lies buried successful the Arlington cemetery overlooking the city, wherever helium was interred 84 years aft his death. Walter Burley Griffin, the Chicago designer who planned Canberra has a water and a 276-km roadworthy named for him, but not a city.
The determination to India
Lutyens was an ambitious man. At 19, with small architectural training, helium struck retired connected his own. He was convinced of his talent; helium was besides aided by his societal connections. His wife, Lady Emily, was the girl of the Earl of Lytton, the erstwhile Viceroy of India. Lutyens had to crook to India due to the fact that England was changing; an assertive mediate people was elbowing the aristocracy retired of power. High taxes connected the affluent introduced in 1909 meant less and less state houses to build. However, helium hated India and was uncharitable towards Indians. An unrepentant racist, he wrote to his woman Emily: “The Taj by moonlight becomes truthful bald and indefinite... It is fantastic but it is not architecture, and its quality begins wherever architecture ceases to be.” This was hardly an isolated remark. In different letter, Lutyens complaining astir the ineptitude of Indian craftsmen, wrote mockingly, “... It volition beryllium hard to find the men — Government ought to breed them! A occupation for the Eugenic societies!”
The Lutyens legacy
Lutyens was 1 of a three-member committee sent from London to prime the tract for New Delhi and aboriginal plan it. When helium arrived successful Delhi, helium had nary acquisition successful municipality planning. He was, fundamentally, a country-house designer who roseate to prominence partially done brilliance and partially done influential societal connections. He was not the sole designer of the capital; helium shared work with his friend-turned-rival Herbert Baker. He did not plan the bungalows presently occupied by Parliamentarians that bear his name. Lord Hardinge, who spent months negotiating with Lutyens and the London bureaucracy connected Delhi’s design, has been erased from the metropolis — Hardinge Avenue became Tilak Marg in the 1960s.
Lutyens yet secured near-exclusive recognition for the city’s plan not conscionable due to the fact that helium was talented, but due to the fact that helium was an exceptional public-relations strategist. His relationship with the steadfast of Country Life, a mag devoted to English architectural beauty, ensured that astir each location helium designed received glowing coverage. Robert Byron’s effusive praise of the Viceroy’s House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) successful the 1931 Architectural Review further elevated his standing, adjacent arsenic Byron dismissed buildings specified arsenic the Parliament House, designed by Baker. But, determination is nary denying Lutyens’s brilliance: helium completed astir 800 projects, an enviable assemblage of enactment successful some standard and variety.
Political jousting
It is improbable that the authorities went into specified minutiae earlier deciding to region his bust. In the past century, his sanction has transitioned from an adjective to a pejorative. Any English-speaking liberal elite who benefitted from the aged bid is marked arsenic ‘Lutyens Elite’. Removing the Lutyens bust is besides a measurement of shadow-boxing with this elite. The determination to put Rajagopalachari’s bust successful his spot is politically expedient for the ruling enactment successful presumption of the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly polls, particularly erstwhile it is supplemented by the communicative that Rajaji had been ignored by the erstwhile Congress governments.
Our pugilistic nationalist discourse, of course, demands that we prime a side. The Opposition’s effect present was banal —lamenting that “whatever is near of Lutyens’ plan past volition beryllium breached down” and folded into a communicative of purging assemblage remnants.
Yes, preserving past matters. Successive governments person had a shameful way grounds with preserving history. Whatever monuments remain, often beryllium without immoderate context. For the British did not physique New Delhi retired of generosity. They shifted the superior from Calcutta to consolidate the caller King’s authorization and negociate the governmental fallout from the partition of Bengal. Similarly, the Narendra Modi authorities did not statesman redeveloping New Delhi during the COVID pandemic due to the fact that determination was a pressing municipality need. Both the British and the Modi authorities were driven by the aforesaid impulse: to stamp their imprint connected the city. Thus, the government’s “decolonisation” effort is little astir humanities justness and much astir shaping headlines. And that, ultimately, is the existent communicative present — not Lutyens, but the authorities of symbolism.
sobhanak.nair@thehindu.co.in
